In general, business models can involve buying merchandise and services for one price and selling it for another. In the process, sellers can incur spectacular costs marketing to prospective and existing users, leasing stores, paying employees, buying and maintaining information technology, transporting, and, most importantly, buying and managing the merchandise itself.
Planning, at one level, is a strategic activity. Executives set business objectives and merchandise planners derive strategies to meet them: back to basics to reduce the style count, extended assortments with additional colors and styles, or new lines of business such as health & beauty. On another level, planning is tactical and operational. The plan influences how many styles and colors a merchant will carry. It influences how distributions are planned for stores. It influences when markdowns are expected to be taken for each style and color. It also influences which stores should carry each style.
However, stores are currently limited by their organizational structure. The large numbers of goods sold by stores in terms of both depth and breadth creates a challenge for an enterprise trying to efficiently manage assortment and allocation and to track profitability and trends. Current stores are limited to operating on a store level, that is the smallest organizational unit by which an enterprise operates is a store. In addition, stores are normally defined by a physical location rather than based on organizational logic.
In view of the foregoing, it would be beneficial to provide a method and system that provides efficient and useful structure for a store. Moreover, it would be beneficial to provide a method and system that allows for detailed control over assortment and planning of merchandise within a store.